Politique de la guitare !
Il s’agit bien de cela : l’organisation pour un temps donné de la vie publique d’une cité de vingt-quatre cordes.
Ensemble, Pascal Battus, Emmanuel Petit, Dominique Répécaud et Camel Zekri balisent un dédale sonique dont nul ne connaît le plan, pas plus que les limites. Il conviendrait d’imaginer une termitière dont on parcourt simultanément les moindres détails, emporté par une multitude de sons en perpétuel mouvement. Les guitares – il y en a ici deux acoustiques (l’une étant prolongée par de l’électronique) et deux électriques (une Fender Stratocaster et une Gibson “environnée”) – sont des instruments essentiellement percussifs. À sons courts. On est parfois tenté alors de faire beaucoup de sons courts, pour combler l’espace, et l’on réussit seulement à combler l’espace d’ennui. La guitare contemporaine contourne cette contrainte à l’aide de moyens divers, archet volé aux violonistes ou e-bow, ventilateur ou raclement de tige métallique, et l’on peut ajouter à la liste le larsen, bien évidemment. Ainsi, un tel quatuor dispose d’un arsenal assez terrifiant de modes d’attaque et d’entretien du son, sans oublier un éventail de timbres que certains qualifieront de luxuriants. On a là en fait un “instrument” que l’on peut comparer dans son fonctionnement à un gros synthétiseur modulaire à 24 oscillateurs, avec la vitesse de réaction en plus. La musique est un voyage à l’intérieur même de cette mer de micro-événements en perpétuel tuilage, où l’on est porté très sûrement par des ondes plus amples. LaMonte Young disait qu’il est plus facile d’entrer dans les sons quand ils sont longs (1). Ici, on a le meilleur des deux mondes, le crépitement des étoiles et l’étendue du désert.
Cette musique, produit de la rencontre formelle (c’est un vrai groupe, pas une rencontre-de-festival, même si ces dernières sont parfois réussies…) de quatre représentants de tribus pratiquant le cousinage, dessine en temps réel la carte du paysage foisonnant qu’elle défriche. Comme chez Borges, cette carte recouvre l’ensemble du territoire. À l’inverse, l’histoire est nettement moins triste. En sept chapitres et autant d’incursions dans la musique pour guitares, pas un seul lambeau n’est laissé sur le côté. La bête fait feu de tout bois, se nourrit de souffles brûlants et de velours pincés, de stridences qu’on jurerait numériques, et même d’un chant de transe qui envoie valser le couvercle au-delà des nuages et entraîne le groupe aux confins de la sauvagerie.

Laurent Dailleau

P. S. (de l’usage des étiquettes…)
La musique gravée ici me semble relever d’une catégorie qui existe déjà ou qui reste à inventer, le hörspiel muet. Car la qualifier de musique-contemporaine-pour-guitare serait loyal mais peut-être mal compris par certains. De même pour musique-du-monde, tout aussi objectif et qui serait, lui, mal compris, mais par d’autres. Musique-improvisée, compris par tous (quoique…), mais prévisible. Musique-du-vingtième-siècle : probablement vrai (voir dates d’enregistrement), mais tellement daté. Finalement, politique-de-la-guitare ne serait pas mal du tout, mais pose un problème crucial : que ranger à côté de ce disque, dans le même bac ? Débats interminables, jalousies, chantages divers…
Non, la vie n’est pas une montagne de sucreries (2)…

(1) LaMonte Young disait aussi : “un jour j’ai essayé beaucoup de moutarde sur un navet cru. J’ai aimé ça plus que tout ce que j’avais jamais entendu de Beethoven.”
(2) Life is no candy mountain. Candy Mountain est un film de Robert Frank dans lequel il est surtout question de… guitares.

conceptualist position
overt imagery
declared significance
proscribed
referential
interruption
narrative
negation
identity
difficulty
form
emblematic
strategy
displacement
absolute
formal gestures
installation
conundrum
slack
incompetence
iconography
iconographic
open signification
perceived
complicity
unconvincing
deny
nihilism
accommodate new
accessible
embrace images
contradiction
automatically
formal
formally expert
argued
simulationist
unpopularity
intensify
independence
theoretically difficult
effortlessly
obscure
authorial uniqueness
recognition
unformulated
resolution
fantasy
speculative thought
vital
stringency
entertainment
accurate justifications
depleted
requirements
repetition
exchanges
stimulation
relationships
endlessly revised
assimilation
self-purification
despairing
contrasted continuum
affirmative
specialised
transgressive
varieties
plucked sound
instrument can be taken to a particular level of development. Further modifications actually become counter-productive
expressiveness and performance
inventive eccentricity
excess
decoration
layers
actual sound
tone-colour associations
central traditions
isolation and detachment
authenticity
1840
undergrowth of musical life
guitar's allure
quickly absorbed
17.835
metamorphosed our aural perception
imagination
self-exploration
analytic evaluation
nostalgia

Keith Rowe

Quatre guitares, deux acoustiques (Emmanuel Petit, Camel Zekri) et deux électriques (Pascal Battus, Dominique Répécaud). Dans ce labyrinthe de textures chimériques où les instruments (empruntant à cet égard la voie tracée par l’iconoclaste Keith Rowe) sont davantage conçus comme des sources sonores en perpétuel mouvement, chacun des guitaristes de l’industrieux quatuor Misères et Cordes conserve sa voix propre dans la (dé)construction du son collectif où fourmille tout un enchevêtrement de bourdonnements, raclements, vrombissements, frottements, grésillements et autres mystérieux cliquetis. Sorte de fascinant rituel tribal, aux modes de jeu à mi-chemin entre des passages paisibles (presque minimalistes) et d’exubérants chambardements cacophoniques.
Gérard Rouy l Jazz Magazine l Novembre 2006

Au Ni Kita, autre alizé auquel viennent nous convier Pascal Battus, Emmanuel Petit, Dominique Répécaud et Camel Zekri. Ce qui m'intéresse, en improvisation, ce sont ces musiciens qui prennent le risque de frôler le désastre, qui parfois en cherchant avec patience et acharnement, ne trouvent pas, séjournent dans un temps musical, temps qui pourtant promet tous les stimuli de l'exaltant et débouche quelques secondes, minutes plus tard sur le merveilleux (au sens de ce que pouvait ressentir un contemporain de Jérôme Bosch devant une de ses toiles, à savoir, terreur et émerveillement de l'enfance). En un mot, des musiciens dont le son est en permanent devenir. Nos quatre guitaristes sont de ceux-là, toujours en équilibre instable, fragile et puissant à la fois. Leurs cordes vibrent, sympathiques, mais distinctes, d'une idée de guitare à l'autre (comme dirait Keith Rowe). Il y a partage du travail, grain à grain, strate à strate dans l'espace qui se dessine – aussi – en profondeur, en une démocratie qu'aucun gouvernement ne dirige, où chacun fait signe et non signature. Un vent souffle, venu du fond des caisses, du cœur des membranes d'ampli, portant des effluves, des couleurs de cordes : acides, corpulentes, distordues, rappeuses, grappillées, "clusterisées", caverneuses, craquelées, grésillantes, abyssales, fulgurantes, pétaradantes, sèches, rondouillardes, STOP ! - REWIND !
Patrick Bœuf l Peace Warriors l Mars 2002

Step right up folks: four guitars, all improvising, and no waiting. That could easily be the come on for this remarkable 63-minute session of collective, non-idiomatic string inspiration. Non-idiomatic is also an understatement, since the members of Au Ni Kita - which means guitar music in the language of the Solomon Islands - offer maximum variety in their sounds since each comes from a different guitar background.
Pascal Battus is a full-fledged experimenter, concentrating on what he calls surrounded guitar, that is one that's extended with such objects as small engines, amplified percussion, the e-bow, radio and electronics. Acoustic guitarist Emmanuel Petit moves between jazz and new music and has worked with the likes of percussionist Lê Quan Ninh and saxophonist Michel Doneda. An early post-rocker, Dominique Répécaud is known for his membership in the band Soixante Etages. Finally, so-called ethnic music is represented by Camel Zekri. Of Algerian-French descent, he has played not only with sonic explorers like Ninh, Doneda and electroacoustian Xavier Charles, but also with traditional performers from Africa and Europe as well.
No hootenanny or cutting contest, the work of the four instead melds into one 24-string instrument. They complement one another so well that it's almost impossible to tell who plays what and, as a matter of fact, where one instant composition ends and the next begins.
Imagine the audience at the festival site in Vandœuvre-lès-Nancy, France where the disc was recorded, as participating in a futuristic tribal ritual. As one man creates his version of sound, the others try to amplify it as best they can, not by adopting his style, but by expressing the parts of their own that will fit.
Which means that at one point you'll hear a solo acoustic guitar interlude, accompanied by the bang, crash and chalk-on-the-blackboard sounds that probably come from electronics. Other times, as on "Eg Sumo" a heavily amplified rock style complete with fuzz tone licks - from Répécaud, perhaps - succeed steady strumming that dissolves into what could be an approximation of a jet plane landing or giganticrubber bans being stretched.
Like German Hans Tammen, a practitioner of "endangered guitar"; Battus appears to spend most of "Thinging" battering his poor instrument into submission. Sounds that could be a lathe turning, a bowling ball rolling down the stage or a fan belt slapping against the mechanism make their appearance. Earlier, what appears to be the rumble of a motor, and a duet between what appears to be one musician sawing on metal and another vocally practicing his opera scales, can't really be ascribed to any one player.
If the fire bell ringing comes from Zekri, is it he or Petit who supplies the acoustic guitar interludes? And is the tiny, flamenco dance of movement with dampened strings on "Argil" a traditional or extended technique? These are questions you'd like to ask, but are satisfied not to, since the CD is satisfying without interpretation.
Although there are times that you feel that a background in auto mechanics or metallurgy would be more appropriate than musicology for judging the results here, the overall impression is fascination with what the four create.
Other European, such as Tammen, Derek Bailey and Keith Rowe are in the midst of creating a new identity for the guitar, divorced from its pre-20th century associations. The four plectrum pioneers here can be added to that group.
However, it's odd that they've taken a pun on mercy (miséricorde) for the title of this disc. For the cordes (cords, chords) are only intermittently in misery (misère). A more appropriate name for the session is suggested by Rowe in the booklet notes: "inventive eccentricity".
Ken Waxman l Jazzweekly

Though the saxophone quartet has found its place in the world of improvised music, the guitar quartet is still a rarity. Along with Fred Frith's guitar quartet and André Duchesne's Les 4 Guitaristes de l'Apocalypso Bar, the French group Misère et Cordes might just have a lock on the market. But unlike the other two units, these four operate firmly in the world of open form, spontaneous improvisation. What could be a frightening skronkfest in the wrong hands turns instead into a series of improvisations that combine timbral explorations of craggy textures with collective counterpoint. One of the things that makes these improvisations work is the variegated approach of each of the participants. Pascal Battus uses his "surrounded guitar" as an electronic sound source, building percussive agitation out of shattered chords, feedback, and static. Emmanuel Petit's acoustic guitar adds steel-sharp needlepoint and resonant brittle chords reminiscent of Derek Bailey. Electric guitarist Dominique Répécaud draws on a rock vocabulary, tossing fuzzed and trayed fines into the mix with an economical sense of space. Camel Zekri uses the clean ringing tone of classical guitar along with an African sensibility of flowing percussive patterns to add a linear flow to the improvisa-tions. The free orchestrations range from pointillistic conversations to bristling sheets of clanging electronics and chiming overtones. There are moments when their exuberance tends to throw the balance from densely packed abstractions toward frenetic turmoil. But through most of the release, careful listening and an open, spacious sense of improvisational development guide these four through a formidable set of sonic inquiry.
Michael Rosenstein l Coda l March/April 2002

One would imagine that a performance of four guitarists would be a rockish affair, but Battus, Petit, Répécaud, and Zekri on Au Ni Kita turn the occasion into a challenging opportunity for creative expression. The sound arising from the four musicians is quite distinctive. Petit plays the acoustic guilar, Répécaud the electric version, Zekri a classical guitar augmented by electronics, and Battus uses a surrounded guitar. This results in having pockets of differing tonality continually bursting onto the scene. The music is not devoid of flow, but it is dominated by broken, serrated lines and a recurring use of space as a partner to the sporadic sound. Petit and Battus hold forth at opposite ends, placing the electricity of Répécaud and the electronics of Zekri in the center. This pattern results in an arc of inundating waves of sound.
The music is often presented through the uniting of two guitarists who probe the other's thought patterns by sending out feelers of choppy notes. When a response is received, open conversation emerges and the rest of the players join in to build the selections into robust symphonies of cacophonous strings. Battus scrapes his strings, Petit uses percussive thumps, Répécaud elongates the sound waves, and Zekri magnifies his notes through electronics in the total abandonment of reserve. Thinging is indicative of this massive eruption that disturbs the prevailing calm. Although compositional credit is given to each of the seven selections, all songs produce the impression of being instantly and collectively composed. The music combines emotionalism with intellectualism; while it is not grasped without effort, it is worthy of concentrated attention.
Frank Rubolino l Cadence l December 2001

ln the language of the Solomon Islands, it seems, Au Ni Kita means music for guitars; and this is indeed music for guitars. Four of them - two electric (played by Pascal Battus and Dominique Répécaud), two acoustic (Emmanuel Petit and Camel Zekri). The players keep each voice distinct rather than creating a homogenised ensemble sound. Approaches vary according to the styles of the individual players, but generally the guitar is viewed as a sound-generating machine rather than a mere instrument. No tunes, then, but an intriguing mesh of clicks, buzzes, scrapes and other elements from the extended vocabulary.
Julian Cowley l Wire l August 2001

Conditionally free improvisation has gestures and flow systems that is, at times, predictable and limiting. Often noisy sessions based on blowing and energy have obstructions that can lead to impatience. Misère et Cordes is neither overly boisterous nor overtly zealous. The musicians open your ears (and mind) to a fresh experience.
This guitar quartet record combines all aspects of a guitar sound, save energy thrashing. It approaches improvised sound from an almost minimal philosophy, defaulting to a less is more attitude. The combination of instruments allows for a variation of thoughts, such as a fuzzy electric onslaught, countered by some freeform classical guitar.
Rarely do all four musicians have at it at once, except on Analog, a fifteen plus minute track, where a series of tension filled passages are processed electronically. One might even go so far as to say the track rocks out with a thumping progression and a bit of wordless vocals.
But mostly Au Ni Kita comes from a European free tradition of finding sounds, working and reworking them for listeners to consider or more importantly for the other members of the quartet to consider. Restful passages are countered with pops, clicks, and electronic hum. It goes without saying that the deconstruction of music performed by this quartet has a definate flow effect. Although randomness is present, it neither limits nor distracts from the sound construction.
Mark Corroto l All About Jazz l July 20001